About Respekt
In schools across Kenya, young boys and girls are unable to access sexual and reproductive health services – despite of their right to do so as entrenched in the Kenyan constitution. Young women and children continue to suffer in the hands of health care practitioners and quacks who claim that female genital mutilation done in the hospital is safer than that done in traditional settings. Lack of Sexual and reproductive health among the youth contribute to unwanted pregnancies, STIs and HIV infections. Teenage pregnancies are associated with adverse outcomes such as unsafe abortion, obstructed labour, fistulaes, and death.
Efforts to address these issues have been made by the national government, namely in the creation of the Adolescent Reproductive Health and Development Policy in 2003 aimed at improving reproductive health and the quality of life among Kenyan adolescents and youth.